MSI Press Blog

  Cultural relativism does not ask us to abandon judgment. It asks us to locate judgment within context. It invites a particular kind of humility: the recognition that our own moral compass is culturally tuned. The principles that feel self-evident to us often feel that way because they were woven into our language, institutions, stories, and habits long before we were aware of them. What we experience as common sense is frequently the inheritance of a specific place and time. This does not mean that all values are equal, nor that criticism becomes impossible. It means that before judging a culture, a practice, or a belief, we should first ask: What problem was this value attempting to solve? What human need did it serve? What world did it emerge from? When we speak of "values," we are not necessarily naming eternal truths descending unchanged through history. More often, we are naming the ways human beings make meaning together. Values are collective responses to the conditi...

  Some childhoods are shaped by bedtime stories, family rituals, and a sense of safety. Others are shaped by uncertainty. When a mother is trapped in drug addiction, children often find themselves living in two worlds at once. In one world, they still love their mother deeply. In the other, they struggle to understand why the person they depend upon seems increasingly unavailable, unpredictable, or absent. The tragedy is not that the love disappears. The tragedy is that addiction often stands between the love and the child's ability to receive it. Living in a World of Instability Children thrive on predictability. They need to know who will pick them up from school, whether dinner will be available, and whether home will feel safe when they walk through the door. Drug addiction can disrupt these basic expectations. Routines become unreliable. Plans change unexpectedly. Moments of stability may be followed by periods of chaos. For a child, the result is often constant uncertainty. O...

  Authors frequently confuse LIST and NET and, in this way, end up with contracts that pay lower royalties when they believe that they are getting a good deal. Often, they cannot negotiate in ways that benefit themselves because they do not understand this difference and its significance. Let's break this down. List refers to the retail price of the book. Payment on list means a percentage of the retail price of the book. If royalties are 8% of list (5-8% is typical), then on a $10 book, royalties would be 80 cents; if they are 10%, royalties are $1, on every book sold. Easy to calculate, easy to predict income, and always standardized, no surprises or overestimations. Net refers to what is leftover after expenses. Gross revenue gets adjusted by a number of expenses: printing costs, printer set-up fees, shipping costs, handling fees, distributor percentage of sales (typically, 40%-55% per book), distributors' initial and continuing catalogue listing costs (without which online ...

  Modern life is noisy. Our phones vibrate. Headlines compete for attention. Responsibilities pile up. Conversations continue in our minds long after they have ended. Even when the world around us appears quiet, our thoughts can feel like a crowded room filled with worries, plans, regrets, and distractions. Many people assume meditation is about stopping those thoughts. It is not. Meditation is not the absence of thought. It is the development of awareness. It teaches us to observe the activity of the mind without being carried away by it. In doing so, it offers something increasingly rare in today's world: clarity. The Mind in Chaos Imagine a glass of muddy water that has just been shaken. The particles swirl rapidly, making the water cloudy and opaque. No matter how hard you stare into the glass, you cannot see through it. Our minds often work the same way. Stress, anxiety, uncertainty, and overstimulation stir our thoughts into constant motion. Decisions become harder. Small pro...